01/07/2026
I was kindly referred a 67-year-old white female patient from Mohave Eye Center for a prosthetic contact lens.
This patient suffered trauma to the left eye 20 years ago (she was hit with a baseball), which caused her to have very poor vision. Then, over the years, she developed a cataract that needed to be removed.
The cataract was removed, but no lens was placed afterward, which is called aphakia. This causes the patient to have very blurry vision, but for her, it probably did not make much of a difference since she has suffered from poor vision for the last 20 years.
You can also see above that her iris is very large, creating a very large pupil. The issue with a large, fixed pupil is that patients can become very light sensitive.
Her main complaint was that her left eye was so light sensitive that she had to walk around with the left eye closed for most of the day.
So, the original plan was to color match the left eye and create a prosthetic soft contact lens with an opaque iris. This would create a smaller artificial pupil and allow less light into her eye.
However, to our surprise—and her surprise—when I trialed a diagnostic scleral lens, she was able to achieve 20/20 vision with a +13.00 over-refraction.
She was so happy that she was in tears because she had not seen that well out of her left eye in 20 years.
So, we redirected our plan, and now we are going to order a scleral lens to improve her vision. Since the visual potential is 20/20 in that eye, I think her depth perception and overall quality of vision are going to be amazing.
We are so thrilled for her.
Thank you to Dr. Widdison from Mohave Eye Center for thinking of us to care for this very special patient.
